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Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Many
of the people who read the things that I write have been playing
games for a very long time. We have together poured tons of hours
into exploring worlds, meeting people, and doing amazing things
otherwise impossible in our regular lives. When you reflect back upon
the games of previous eras, the odds are in favor of you looking back
fondly, having pleasant memories of your experiences. However, the
opposite is often said of modern gaming. When many of us think of
modern games, we do not think highly of them. What is the reason for
this? Is it because gaming actually has gotten worse over the years,
or is there something else to it?

In
all honesty, I do not believe that it is the former. There have been
vast improvements in the way games play as the years have gone on. I
know this from experience. Recently, I went back to replay a
franchise from the Playstation 2 era, Jak
and Daxter, because it had been re-released in
the form of an HD Collection. When playing through, I realized
something: Older games are much less fun than I remember. While I
still enjoyed the series, I was also amazed at how much I tolerated
when I played those old games as a child. I had forgotten about how
aggravating it was to die at the very final part of a boss fight or a
platforming segment and have to start over from the very beginning
due to a lack of checkpoints. The frustration and tedium that is born
from having to do many pointless, uninteresting, and arbitrary
mini-games and challenges in order to unlock bonus content and extras
seemed almost alien to me. This was the moment, for me personally,
where I realized how far games have grown. Just like how PS2-era
platformers grew out of the lives system of their predecessors
(itself a hold over from the bygone arcade era), modern games in all
genres have streamlined their mechanics and learned how to alleviate
frustrations in order to make the experience more enjoyable. While I
do not think modern games are perfect, I do not necessarily long for
the “good old days” of gaming. So why do we get this feeling that
old games were awesome and new games suck? This week, I will try to
find the answers.

One
of the most obvious reason for the nostalgia we have for previous
generations is a combination of Sturgeon's
Law and human nature. For all of the two of you
who frequent the internet, yet are completely unaware of Sturgeon's
Law, it is a rule discovered by science-fiction writer Theodore
Sturgeon in 1951. When critics of the science-fiction genre said that
the vast majority of its works were of poor quality, Sturgeon made
the realization that, in fact, all genres and all forms of creative
works are composed of mostly inferior, crappy productions with only a
few real gems standing out. This rule has stood the test of time and
has been condensed to “90% of everything is crap!” In that sense,
works from this period in gaming are no different from previous eras.
However, when we look back upon the games of old, we rarely remember
all of the sub-par works. In fact, we mostly focus on the best works
from prior generations simply because they are the ones that became
more popular, widespread, and long lasting. These circumstances
combined conspire to make us feel like we are surrounded by a pile of
crap. While it is true, it is no less true than it was before.

But
even with that in mind, we have not quite accounted for all of the
nostalgia. No, there have to be other factors at work. I have a
number of theories as to possible factors of this. My first theory is
that the internet has made it much easier for dissenting opinions to
become widespread. Think about it. In the old days, the only way we
would be able to hear other people's opinions of games is through
gaming magazines and friends. Nowadays, we have ready access to the
opinions of millions of people at our fingertips. Notable dissent
like the Retake
Mass Effect movement among other vocal elements
of the gaming community were almost completely unheard of until
recent history. This is a unique era in that respect. The prevalence
of the internet has had an amplifying effect on the spread of
information. Not only do we communicate faster, we form opinions and
do critical thinking/analysis much more rapidly as well. Furthermore,
negative opinions are much more likely to be spread online than
positive ones, which results in an overall warped perception of
gaming culture.

Another
factor working to reinforce our nostalgia for the “good old days”
are the increasingly intrusive business practices of gaming
publishers. In the old days, publishers did not have much choice in
what they did with their games. Since most consoles lacked reliable
internet connections, they had to release the complete final product
on the disk without the capability of altering it in any way. Back
then, for better or worse, the product you bought was generally the
product you got simply due to the technological limitations of the
consoles at the time. This meant that it was necessary to do
extensive bug testing and proofreading. Nowadays all consoles (except
for those of the unfortunate group of people that live in rural
areas) have access to stable internet connections, which means games
can be patched and extended after the fact. Of course, since publicly
owned corporations tend to value profit over all others, it was
natural that they would try to milk these new innovations for all
they were worth with things like On-Disc DLC, Day 1 DLC, cutting
corners only to patch the game later, and DRM schemes. which I have
discussed
inthe
past. Make no mistake, this would have happened
earlier if the capability to do so was more widespread in prior
console generations. Nonetheless, this has caused a warped perception
of the games themselves. It is difficult for us to divorce the
qualities of the overall game with the practices of the publishers
who help create it, so it should not come as a surprise that people
have begun to hold this generation in contempt.

My
final theory as to why this nostalgia is so widespread is a very
simple one. Because of the high risk/ high reward nature of the
industry today, such as it is, games have become increasingly
homogenized over time. It takes many more resources and significantly
more time to make a AAA game now than it did in the past, we are all
painfully aware of this fact. This means that where in the past,
publishers could produce several different and diverse projects and
were almost guaranteed to profit off their combined sales (some would
flop, some would so well, yet they would generally balance each other
out), it is a different story altogether for the modern industry.
They have to be more risk-adverse in order to ensure that they
mitigate losses and profit at the end of the day. Unfortunately,
“risk-adversity” tends to lead to publishers wanting to copy the
thing that is most successful, even if they do not fully understand
it. In other words, where we saw diverse games in the past that could
cater to different player tastes and demographics, we now see a
shooter,
another shooter,
a shooter/RPG
hybrid, and still another shooter.
These are not just all shooters, but they are all shooters with the
same “gritty realistic” tone and bland color palette consisting
of fifty shades of gray. There is less balancing these games than
there was in the past. While the indie scene and Kickstarter are
certainly doing their part to mitigate this homogenization, they
simply are not large enough to cause a significant impact. Besides,
most people think about the AAA side of gaming when the gaming
industry comes to mind.

Again,
modern day gaming is by and large much better than gaming of previous
generations. However, there is much that contributes to a perception
of lower-quality than previous generations. Unfortunately, in any
entertainment industry, especially one as expensive, culturally
pervasive, and profitable as the gaming industry, perception is
everything. If people start to think that games are sucking, they
will just go find something else to spend their money on. The
industry is not like food or gas. It is a frivolous expense that can
be easily cut. The AAA industry will need to clean up its image and
stop its unsustainable business practices if they wish to remain in
the top dogs in gaming. It is a sad fact of life, but it is true and
we all know it.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Many of the people who watch the gaming industry look at the trends
and patterns of it and foresee many problems plaguing it going
forward. The stock
prices and profit margins for the biggest
publishers in the industry are doing very poorly. AAA gaming is given
ridiculous and unnecessarily high budgets that transform mild
successes in terms of units sold into amazing
failures in terms of profit. Lastly, a lot of
the innovative elements of the industry feel stifled by the
increasing oppressive environment fueled (knowingly or otherwise) by
large publishers. Many great ideas and developers have had difficulty
getting funding in this climate for a variety of reasons like niche
appeal and risky ambition. People were getting fed up. And then
something interesting happened. Double Fine studios, headed by Tim
Schafer, decided to make a bold and up-until-then unheard of move:
They decided to use
Kickstarter to crowd-fund the studio's next
project, allowing them to make the game of their dreams free of the
influence of publishers. It made headlines and became very
successful. This inspired other developers to place their own ideas
on Kickstarter, including projects like Wasteland
2 and Ouya.
Kickstarter campaigns have once again reached the headlines with
Obsidian's
Project Eternity.

For those of you who do not follow the industry, allow me to explain
the gist of Kickstarter and crowd-funding. Kickstarter is a website
that allows people to post their ideas for “creative projects” in
the hopes that people will take interest in it and donate money
towards funding the project. (Note: This does apply exclusively to
video games. It can be any creative project that has a definite end
goal and results in the creation of something.) When a project is
posted, the poster sets a goal for the amount of money received
through donors and the time allotted to reach this goal, usually
within the span of one month. During this time, people pledge money
to the project. While the money never changes hands until the very
end, backers promise, as specified in the Terms of Service, to keep
enough money in their account to cover their pledge. At the end of
the time period, if the money pledged to the project meets or exceeds
the goal posted at the beginning, then the project poster takes the
money, after Kickstarter deducts its fee for services rendered, and
agrees to spend it on completing the project to the best of their
abilities in a binding legal contract enforced by Kickstarter's
terms. If the project fails, then no money exchanges hands and the
project goes unfunded. This means that the project has to set a goal
high enough to theoretically cover the estimated costs of the
project, but low enough to avoid falling short of its goals,
providing an interesting competitive dynamic. For those with a
creative mind, the concept of crowd funding can be extremely useful.
Naturally, it would make sense to extend this to video game
development, since it too is a creative endeavor. However, there are
some unfortunate realities that we need to accept with Kickstarter.

The first thing we need to
accept with Kickstarter is that successfully generating enough funds
through the site is more difficult than most people would be led to
believe. A successful Kickstarter campaign needs to be able to
generate enough buzz and publicity to attract potential funders. This
is easier said than done. The project in question would need to set
itself apart from other projects by providing a unique gimmick, an
interesting concept, or a pedigree that other projects would lack. We
have seen this more than once. The Kickstarters that are most well
known are from established developers and gaming personalities. Think
of the campaigns I listed at the beginning of this article. Out of
the four of them, three came from highly established brands and/or
names in the industry. The last one, Ouya, was from a less
established industry veteran and had the good fortune to be one of
the gaming press's darlings. All of them had a bigger claim to fame
than most Kickstarter campaigns have and thus attracted a larger
crowd, meaning they did not have to worry about the second half of
the equation. They had enough publicity and reputation to gain
funding. Should another campaign come along that attracts enough
people, they need to then convince those people to agree to part with
their money in the name of funding a project. To do that, they need
to be convinced that the campaigner and their team have the ability
to actually create the game. Writing up a design document alone will
no longer cut it here. It would be necessary to have a working model
of the game and either a gameplay footage reel or, preferably, a demo
version available for play. Funding and/or time would be essential in
making this a reality, so a layman making a game from start to finish
using only Kickstarter funding is highly impractical. All of this
combined results in less
than half
of all gaming related Kickstarter campaigns earning enough to reach
their goal. (Note: That statistic includes tabletop games as well as
video games.)

Though that still leaves a number of campaigns that achieve the goal
and get successfully funded. You may be tempted to believe that
because they received money, they now have to build the game. There
is a bit of a problem with that though, which leads me to my next
point: We have no guarantee that a Kickstarter campaign intended to
make a video game will actually result in the creation of a video
game. Before anybody of my readers panic, let me make this perfectly
clear, by the terms of service put forth by the folks that run
Kickstarter, which all of the users agree to, all of the funding for
a Kickstarter project MUST go towards that project. The
person/company who ran the campaign will be held legally responsible
if they take the money and instead go on a vacation in the Bahamas or
do anything else with it that could not realistically benefit the
project. In that sense, the contributors can feel secure in their
investment. However, just like with investors and stock owners of
major corporations, Kickstarter campaign donors are not guaranteed a
return of investment: There is always a risk involved. While the
money gained does have to go towards the project outlined on
Kickstarter, they are not obligated to succeed and create what was
specified. There are very good reasons (legal, practical, and moral)
to not hold them responsible for the success of the project, but it
is an important thing to make note of. Unlike AAA publishers who have
the authority and responsibility to check-up on the project and
oversee its development, possibly firing and directing staff on the
project (for better or worse), Kickstarter donors have no form of
oversight unless the campaigner chooses to give them one, thus the
gamble is significantly higher. They are going on blind faith that
the creator has the skill, knowledge, and time to complete the
project. It is not a deal-breaker as donors acknowledge that they
will make no profit beyond the rewards specified by campaigners and
contributions are rarely high enough to cause people to worry if they
made the right decision, but it is something we need to acknowledge
regarding the crowd-funding model.

The last thing I wanted to point
out with the trend of Kickstarter funding is that not every game
would work as a Kickstarter campaign. In fact, the games that would
potentially benefit from this method of acquiring funds cover a very
narrow spectrum. An ideal Kickstarter game would have a budget out of
reach for most people and small, start-up companies normally.
However, they cannot be too big or they would never be able to
acquire enough funding. This would mostly cover games along the lines
of indie games, two-dimensional platformers, isometric Role Playing
Games, and others along those lines. Games like that would only
require a couple of thousands to one or two million dollars in
funding. While many people would scoff at me for saying “only a few
million dollars,” keep in mind that most games in the AAA market
cost several
tens of millions dollars or more.
Even in the PS2 era, some games cost around ten
million dollars
or more to produce. Getting that much money through a Kickstarter
would be next to, if not outright, impossible. The only semi-reliable
way to acquire that kind of cash is through the financial backing of
large publishers like Ubisoft or EA. Rarely do we see a group of
people or a business that has the savviness to remain independent
while funding and making consistently good games. It is much more
difficult than it sounds, which is why publishers are still around.
As much as we dislike companies like Activision and EA, they do serve
a purpose. I feel like this is common sense to a degree, yet I do
find that people on the internet sometimes seem to forget this simple
fact.

I applaud this use of Kickstarter to begin funding projects that
might not otherwise see the light of day. However, we do have to
acknowledge the limitations of crowd-funding. Our industry is one
that is fundamentally fueled by high-risk, high-reward investments
that consume tons of money. While we can debate the necessity of AAA
budgets being as high as they are (I am very outspoken in my own
opposition), they are a thing in this industry and fuel many
of the gameplay advancements we have seen. Until a decent
conversation can be had about the fundamental nature of the industry,
such as it is, Kickstarter will be far from feasible as a suitable
alternative to the current business model. Even after we reevaluate
AAA gaming (considering the state of the industry, it is inevitable
that somebody comes in and changes how it gets run), I remain
unconvinced that Kickstarter could do very much beyond small start-up
projects. It would simply require far more money trading hands than
would be feasible through crowd-funding. So while I do praise this
wave of innovation, I urge you to remain level headed regarding the
use of Kickstarter and realize that it is not the great new way to
fund video games that many people make it out to be.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Most people who read this regularly are aware of how much I love Role
Playing Games. I love them for their emphasis on story and player
interaction with the story through their mechanic. It is fun to play
through these games and be truly immersed in a brand new world and
its story. However, these games are far from flawless. Being video
games, they can only do so much in terms of simulating a world. Since
all games are just computer programs, they have to be represented in
ways that a computer can easily process and display. In the old days,
the limitations caused by the technology of the time inspired a
number of RPG genre conventions. That was way back then. In the
modern day, many of these technical limitations no longer exist
because of the way technology constantly evolves. Developers are no
longer bound by the technological limits of that past and are capable
of doing much more with their games.

However, many of the old conventions and styles that were seen back
then, once used to abstract many of the things that were (and
sometimes still are) difficult to represent any other way, are still
present in the RPGs being created in the here and now. A few days
ago, I had a conversation on Twitter with escapistmagazine.com
contributor Grey Carter
about some of these mechanics that have withstood the test of time.
Specifically, whether or not it is worth it to keep these mechanics
around. In this week's post, I will apply my analysis to the topic
and see if video really did kill the radio star. Is it time we
rethought RPGs and how they act in a mechanical sense?

As usual when writing an article like this, it helps to define what
I am referring to so that we are all on the same page. When I refer
to an RPG, I mean any story-focused game with a strong sense of
character progression and/or customization. This can mean anything
from the Final Fantasy games of old all the way to more modern games
like Fallout: New Vegas or Mass Effect 3. I will be taking a look at
how these games use old school mechanics and why they use them in the
way that they do. Then, we will see if it is possible to do things
differently now, either making the game either more immersive or
improve them in terms of control, role-playing, or entertainment
value.

One of the biggest conventions of the RPG genre is the use of skill
points as a way to represent the player character's proficiency with
regards to certain disciplines, both in and out of combat. In a
(semi-)turned based RPG, it makes sense for characters to have stats
that represent their ability to perform certain actions successfully,
be it firing a gun, casting a spell, swinging a sword, hacking a
computer, or talking their way out a dangerous situation. Since it is
difficult to have much in the way of player input in a turn-based
game, skill levels are the only way to differentiate one player's
character and style from another player's. The only way to show
player progression in a turn based game is to increase their
character's stats and skills, which affect overall damage output and
chance of success. Considering the technical and mechanical
limitations of such games, implementing a system of stats and skills
the determine how talented the player is makes total sense.

When we move into a three dimensional, action-oriented space, this
quickly becomes irrelevant. In an action-RPG like the more recent
installments in the Fallout franchise, shooting mechanics and player
skill are now factors in the success of the player. However, in these
games, there exists a system of stats and skills that influence the
outcome of confrontations and events. Improving weapon skills
increases the damage output and accuracy of weapons governed by it
while doing the same to non-combat skills allows the player to do
more with them via Speech checks and minigames. Sadly, I do not think
any of this is necessary. Since we now have a fully realized world
with combat comparable to (though not better than) many First Person
Shooters and minigames that require player skill to execute properly,
it makes less sense to abstract these elements. For RPGs like these,
it may no longer make sense to even have skill levels and points for
the character since the player's own skill, which will improve over
the course of the game, can be taken into account. This can even be
extended to non-combat scenarios. Lockpicking and hacking can be done
through minigames as demonstrated by recent titles like Fallout 3,
whose lockpicking is widely regarded as one of the best infiltration
minigames of all time, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which had a
very interesting and enjoyable hacking minigame (sadly marred by a
few questionable design decisions in the game) and the best
conversation mechanic I have ever played with. Fallout 3 also had a
hand in proving that skill points in these non-combat aspects of an
RPG are completely arbitrary. In the game, it was impossible to even
make an attempt to pick a lock unless the player had a high enough
Lockpicking skill to do so. This makes even less sense upon
realization that these higher level locks are genuinely tougher to
pick. It is more logical either make the game more difficult, or a
have a skill that governs what locks the player can pick. Having both
is excessive. Though I understand that many would be wary of
introducing player skill as an element of play, since it has the
potential to leave some players out due to a lack of it, this is why
modern games have adjustable
difficulty as a way to equilize the imbalance between skilled and
unskilled players. In the end, it is a design choice to be made by
the creators of the game. I just believe it is worth thinking about
this decision when going forward, since some games simply have no use
for these mechanics.

The other common trope used in RPGs that I will be going over is the
concept of vendor trash. By vendor trash, I mean items the take up
inventory space, yet only serve the purpose of being sold to
merchants for money. I can understand why developers do this even
today. It makes no sense for the player to kill a wolf and have it
drop five gold coins. To facilitate immersion, they would instead
have a wolf drop a pelt that the player can then sell to vendors to
make money. Though this concept is immersive and makes sense for a
world, it is not exactly fun for the player to have to carry around
tons of loot that takes up valuable inventory space which could be
used to carry more useful items like weapons, armor, medical supplies
and food. While I am a fan of forcing players to make meaningful
choices, it is hardly meaningful to force players to choose between
picking up a new sword or picking up a gold ingot that can be sold
for money used to purchase a new sword.

In my opinion, vendor trash still has a place in RPGs, but it should
be handled differently. Since vendor trash is effectively just gold
waiting to be cashed out, it should be in a separate category and
take up no space. While some may argue that it is not immersive to
carry all sorts of vendor trash and not have it weigh the player
down, I would argue contrary to that. When a designer forces the
player to interact too much with the underlying systems of a game
world, they start to lose their immersion. Thus, it is important to
balance ease of use with simulation, which is far easier said than
done. Also, by that logic, it would be unimmersive to allow the
player to store tens of thousands of gold coins in their inventory
without taking up space.

It is also possible to use vendor trash in other ways. For example,
in Final Fantasy XII, which has the unlimited inventory space that
many JRPGs do (as an interesting side note), did away with random
animals dropping gold coins when they die (as an abstraction of
taking their pelts) in favor of vendor trash. What they also did was
introduce a new type of good in the vaious shops called Bazaar Goods.
How it worked was that when the player sold cetain combinations of
vendor trash to dealers, it would unlock certain items and item packs
in the Bazaar. The game explained that selling vendor trash to
various stores introduced these component items into the economy,
allowing people to use those items in the construction of new ones to
be put up for sale. This was an interesting way of making seemingly
useless items have more purpose beyond just being gold in item form.
After all, people would start making items with the goods that
adventurers would gather and sell. Designers should put more thought
into systems like this because RPG players will usually end up
interacting with the economy very often. It is worth it to make this
experience as painless, yet interesting, as possible.

To be fair, both of these mechanics were in place well before RPGs
existed in video game form. Old RPGs, both from the West and from the
East, take inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop
games in that vein and are, as such, deeply entreched in the way
people think about RPGs. Back then, they had use as a gameplay
abstraction to otherwise realistic events. While a healthy respect
for tradition is always a valuable thing to have, I feel like it is
necessary to analyze old ways of thinking to see if they are still
necessary in the modern era. When technology and game design evolve,
some of the old ways of thinking no long apply. In the cases I
outlined above, both mechanics still have merit in modern games, but
they may need to be tweaked a little in order to make them more
palatable. Though I am sure there are other examples of outdated
mechanics presisting longer than they should have, I cannot think of
any more that need discussion. Nonetheless, it is important to do an
analysis like this if we want to improve this medium as a whole.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

By now, people are well aware of the many failings of the third Mass
Effect game: It had Day 1, On-Disc DLC that seemed far too integrated
with the game to be anything but an obvious cash grab, most of the
game failed to acknowledge the player's choices from previous games
and made them feel irrelevent, and the ending was a failure in more
ways than one. However, there is one area of Mass Effect 3 that
people tend to ignore, the cooperative multiplayer. I am not here to
talk ill of the multiplayer mode in its entirety. In fact, I enjoyed
my brief time with the mode. They used the core mechanics of the game
in a very clever way to produce an enjoyable and coheasive
experience. However, I have one big gripe with the cooperative mode.
That would be its use of microtransactions and how they affect the
overall experience.

Theoretically,
I am not against the concept of microtransactions. It is fine for
developers to charge for unlock codes to things players can get by
just playing the game normally. From a business standpoint, it makes
sense and is a good way to increase the income generated by the game.
It also allows players with less free time to compete with players
who play constantly by using money to gain the rewards normally
obtained through gaining experience. Both parties, the creators and
the consumers, stand to benefit from offering this option.
Considering the
state of the AAA industry,
it makes sense for a publisher to try to make as much money as they
can off an investment while maintaining the good will of the fanbase,
and this is one of the best ways to do that.

It is not the fact that Mass Effect 3 had microtransactions that
bothered me. What bothered me is the fact that they allowed
microtransactions to negatively affect the design of how the game
progresses in another obvious attempt and jarring cash grab. Allow me
to explain. The way progression in Mass Effect 3's cooperative mode
works is that the when the player finishes a match, they gain
experience towards the class they played as for that match as well as
in-game credits which can be used to purchase weapons, characters,
upgrades, and items. Here is where things get interesting. It is
impossible to directly purchase the these items. Instead, the player
must purchase packs which have a random chance of dropping the item
wanted. As icing on the cake, the player does not need to use in-game
credits to make these purchases. If they do not wish to go through
match after match to build up credit to buy packs, they can always
use real world money to purchase them. I can only assume that the
reason they chose to handle microtransactions in this manner is to
maximize profits. However, handling it in this manner ruined the
player experience in a few ways.

The
biggest way this ruins the experience is that it can potentially
negate any advantage one might gain through microtransactions. The
draw of using microtransactions, at least on the player's end of the
bargain, is that it allows a player to earn rewards for a small fee
that would require time on their part to unlock normally. It is
paying for expedience. This is lessened through the use of packs. The
developer cannot guarentee that someone paying via microtransactions
will receive the item they wish to buy, which defeats the purpose of
having the option. (Again, from the consumer standpoint, not the
standpoint of the publisher, whose goal is to make money.) Rather
than give customers a guarenteed payoff for spending hard-earned
money on the game, they give them the chance to waste their money by
purchasing packs without getting anything of value out of it. The
only reason I can see to use this model is to capitalize on people's
inability
to gauge purcahses
and hope that they spend tons of money on the store before realizing
exactly how much they spent. While part of me thinks that this is
sheer genius on the part of EA, the other part sees nothing but a
slimy and unrewarding business model surrounding an otherwise
enjoyable game mode.

The
other reason this negatively impacts the cooperative mode is the fact
that it completely randomizes the reward system. A big problem with
the system Mass Effect 3 has in place is that there is no way to
reduce the pool from which you draw items from. The same list of
items can drop from all of the packs in the game. The only difference
between packs is the likelihood of obtaining rare items. Many players
have bought hundreds of packs and only obtained a few items in the
same category of equipment they will actually use. Countless
stories on
the internet exist where a player who mainly uses Generic Weapon Type
X gets nothing but Type Y from the packs they are buying. This
results in being unable to upgrade their equipment to more powerful
weapons for several experience levels worth of matches, meaning that
they are farther behind than other players who have been favored by
the random number gods. When designing this system, they should have
taken into account how it could and would affect the overall
progression of the players of this cooperative mode.

Now,
I have come down very harshly on the microtransaction system included
in Mass Effect 3. However, I do believe it could have worked. There
are alternatives the team at Bioware could have used to include
microtransactions while preventing, or at least alleviating, the
progression problem that belies the current method of inducing them.
The first of my proposals involves scrapping the trading card
game-like system we have now in favor of one of direct purchases
using either in-game credits or cash. In this system, every weapon,
character, and item is unlockable from the start. Each of them will
be assigned a price in both cash and real world credits. To unlock an
item, the player will need to either save up the credits through
playing matches or by outright purchasing them with money. Upgrading
weapons would also cost credits or money. Since we are no longer
using random draw and are allowing people to pick out and save up for
items, the prices would need to be elevated in order to compensate. I
would advocate this system because it would place player progression
more in their own control. This way, they do not feel like they are
not getting anything out of playing the game or spending money
because they know exactly what they are saving up for or buying.
There is complete transparacy and no one will come out angry or
disappointed. While I personally consider this to be the ideal, I can
see why a publisher might not like it. It does reduce the ammount of
money they can earn through microtransactions and it reduces the
Skinner
Box style
enjoyment a player might feel when buying packs.

With that in mind, I have another proposal. My next plan would be to
shamelessly rip off the microtransaction/drop system for a very
successful free-to-play game: Team Fortress 2. I am sure the vast
majority of the ones reading this are already familiar with the
system in place with Team Fortress 2, though I will do my best to
explain it for those who are not familiar with it. In Team Fortress
2, the player is allowed to equip items that have positive and/or
negative effects on the player character. These items are available
for sale from the in-game store for real-world currency. However,
players do not have to spend money to obtain these items. It is
possible, through playing the game, to obtain these items through
random item drops. They occur semi-randomly in the game and often
enough that the player will obtain them at a steady rate. The
positive of this system is that it keeps the Skinner Box manipulation
of players, giving them the satisfaction of getting great items after
enough tries, yet allows players who do not like this style of play
to purchase the items they want directly. This provides an outlet for
those who dislike random number generators while maintaining the
option to just keep playing for a chance at getting the item. I would
advocate more frequent drops then Team Fortress 2 has when going this
route, as their drop rates are a little low for my tastes and doing
so would make drop hunting less annoying. However, as an option in
general, this style is very appealing.

But let us once again assume that EA is not sold on that style of
handling microtransactions. Let us go further in our assumption by
saying that they are insistant on using the trading card game-like
booster pack system that takes both in-game credits and real world
currency. It is possible to make a few minor tweaks to the system
already in place in order to improve it. The biggest problem with the
system is how it can give the player a really long run of bad luck by
giving them weapons they have no desire to use. This is caused by the
fact that every pack purchased draws from the collective pool of
every item in the cooperative mode while only affecting the spawn
rates of rarer items. What we can do to make this less luck-based is
to divide packs into different categories. It should be possible to
split up the weapons between packs so that there are dedicated packs
for SMGs, Assasult Rifles, Sniper Rifles, Shotguns, and Pistols.
Doing this gives the player the ability to control the general type
of the items dropped while maintaining the random element inherent in
the system. It is similarly possible to do this with new characters
by giving them a dedicated pack. Of course prices for these packs
would need to be adjusted. If they wanted to, they could still have
the option to buy those packs that can contain anything, but they
would need to be cheap to encourage that pack's purcahse over others.
By giving players a slight control over drops (by affecting which
type of item drops), the possibility that the player is negatively
impacted by random draw is minimized, if not outright eliminated. It
also preserves the Skinner Box that can encourage players to
continuously play the game or spend money on it.

This addition to the Mass Effect franchise, the cooperative mode, is
a fun extra added to the game. It has all of the ingredients of a
good time. To me, it is good verging on being great. The mode was
marred, however, by the way it handled microtransactions. They could
have been done well and served as more than just another cheap
attempt to make more money. (Though that would have always been a
motive, there is no avoiding it.) It could have added to the
accessibility of the game, but it has to be done in a more
intelligent way. The system in place with Mass Effect 3 feels
sloppily done and hamfisted into the mode, giving players the
impression that they are being exploited by corporate. Since it seems
like free-to-play is becoming a bigger part of the industry, it will
be even more important going forward to master the inclusion of
microtransactions and their affect on the game. Hopefully, developers
and publishers alike can learn from this game's failures and move
forward.